


in rain or shine

by apparentlyweexist



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), M/M, crowley takes six thousand years to process something that should have taken maybe six months, i can't believe that's a tag, if im being generous, this was "crow man is big stupid" in my drafts and i feel like that's all you need to know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-27 18:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20050726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparentlyweexist/pseuds/apparentlyweexist
Summary: The first time Crowley hears the termbest friendis in 1040 AD.





	in rain or shine

**Author's Note:**

> good omens really just turned my entire head around and made me re-examine my life choices and helped me actually finish something for the first time like. ever. bless this fandom honestly.
> 
> i know the footnotes don't work and i am very sorry and will try to fix it when i have time but this was burning a hole in my google drive 
> 
> title from you're my best friend by queen because i am 1) corny and 2) lazy

The first time Crowley hears the term _best friend_ is in 1040 AD [1]. He’s knocking about where Spain will be, in a couple hundred years, dodging Hell’s calls and making just enough trouble to stay alive, when he hears it. It comes from two little boys running by him, dirty and dusty, and it only comes in passing. Small children toss it around so readily, after all--to a leaf, to a slug, to a boy they’d only met five minutes previously. It comes, and it goes, and a part of Crowley says _huh_?

He files it away in a dusty corner of his mind, as he often does with uncomfortable things, and doesn’t think about it for another three hundred years.

\--

The next time Crowley thinks explicitly about it is in 1408, shortly after he wakes up. It hadn’t been a long nap, not yet—just about ten years, once the fourteenth century had truly passed the realm of tolerability. He’s quite optimistic about this century though, at least so far, and he’s just run into Aziraphale again. Some part of him is absolutely delighted, and a larger part of him is doing its very best to hide that. It’s not quite succeeding, and mostly ends up showing itself by emphasizing the part of Crowley that delights in snapping at Aziraphale and performing the kind of petty miracles he knows will irritate him the most.

So it shouldn't be a surprise, really, that around midway through the year, sun boiling hot in the summer sky above them, Crowley and Aziraphale end up a blazing row. Neither of them are quite sure what started it, only that it’s here now, and they’re angry. Aziraphale is still nursing a little bit of frustration off the bubonic plague—Crowley never quite made it clear that it wasn’t his doing[[2](%E2%80%9C#note2%E2%80%9D)]—and the ongoing Spanish Inquisition is, as usual, a sore subject.

They’ve been yelling angry nothings for the good bit of an hour so far, and Crowley is starting to run out of things to say that don’t start in on the truly offensive bits of his repertoire—things like how he’s fairly certain Aziraphale hasn’t seen another real angel since that business with Charlemagne, and how a disgraced cherub-turned-Principality really isn’t much of an authority on the Word of the Almighty, anyway, and who’s it to say that Aziraphale wouldn’t have Fallen by now if She had been paying even a lick of attention.

He’s also, for that matter, wondering why he’s even holding back. He _is_ a demon; it’s in his very nature to go in for the killing blow. What is he doing playing nice with an _angel_ of all creatures anyway?

Something in the back of his mind, something that has been thinking steadily for going on three hundred years now, is approaching an answer, and it’ll probably only take it another five minutes to get there, if Crowley can just _slow down_ and let himself _think_ for once.

That is, unfortunately, unlikely. The argument has reached its climax, and both angel and demon are out of spiteful-but-not-too-hurtful things to say to each other, which in turn means that they’re just absolutely spitting mad. Usually when they have arguments like this, they end up staying out of each other’s paths for the next hundred or so years[[3](%E2%80%9C#note3%E2%80%9D)], so the thing in the back of Crowley’s mind had better get a move on (despite extraordinarily strenuous working conditions) or he was going to be in quite the tight spot.

“I _can’t_, Crowley, you know I can’t, and I frankly cannot believe you would come and ask me this in the first place!”

“Well, angel, _frankly_ I don’t need your help anyway! Never have!” Crowley snarls, and whips around and stalks away. He's not even sure what, exactly, he’d asked for[[4](%E2%80%9C#note4%E2%80%9D)], but he _is_ certain in his self-righteousness (self-wrongness? self-depravedness?) that he doesn’t need it from _Aziraphale_.[[5](%E2%80%9C#note5%E2%80%9D)]

He makes it about three hours down the road (so his brain is a little behind the times, it’s okay—aren’t we all?) before he screeches to a halt, quite abruptly and with no small amount of surprise.

_Aziraphale is my best friend._

To see him from the outside, absolutely flabbergasted and gape-jawed in the middle of a hot, dusty country lane, one would think that he’d just become ill, or perhaps remembered that a grandmother or significant other had passed away.

He considers the possibility, turns it over in his mind a bit, gingerly, like it’s something spiky and terrifying, and resolves to get firmly, perpetually, absolutely completely drunk off his face.

The next twenty years are something of a blur, after that, and when he runs into Aziraphale again, some time around the turn of the 16th century, he’s quite forgotten about the whole thing. It’s locked away in a deep, dusty corner of his mind, with other such revelations like _this angel isn’t quite so bad, really_, and _I think Aziraphale might be my friend._ There is another, deeper, darker, dustier corner, and he’s barricaded that one with the mental equivalent of poison-tipped spears and Jefferson Starship albums. It’s so well guarded that even it doesn't know what it is that it's supposed to be hiding.

\--

It comes up again in the 18th century, shortly after the Americans had had their little rebellion[[6](%E2%80%9C#note6%E2%80%9D)], and now the French are twitchy enough that Crowley can sense another free commendation coming along. Humans truly are marvellously ingenious.

They’ve just finished comparing notes on the Americans and are celebrating, sprawled next to the Thames (it doesn’t smell quite so bad, yet, but it’s certainly getting there) with a bottle of wine and some surreptitious glances, every now and then, to make sure no one is watching.

“Do you ever wonder, Crowley,” Aziraphale speaks up, clearly well on his way to being absolutely sozzled, “whether we should have just left America well enough alone?”

Crowley swivels slowly, to face Aziraphale directly. “….No? Why would I? We did alright, didn’t we? They got their little revolution, Hell got their souls, Heaven got their freedom from tyranny or whatnot, everybody goes home happy. What’s not to like?”

“Well, it’s just that there’s this revolution down the line in _France,_” he says, with the air of disdain any proper Brit, even an angel, has when speaking of the French, “and it’ll all be because of _them._”

Crowley blinks, slowly, for the first time in half an hour. “Is that….is that a _bad_ thing, angel? Isn’t that what your lot want? Peace among the masses and all that?”

Aziraphale sways in the grass, blinking groggily. “Well, it’s not exactly peace now, is it?” he asks petulantly. “Why, I hear there’s going to be a _guillotine_ involved.” He shudders. “How savage.”

The air lies still between them for a bit, and then Crowley breaks the silence. “It’ll have a good ending, though, won’t it? Isn’t that all Heaven cares about, the endgame?”

“But why must it be so _messy?_ Why can’t they sort this out without killing each other, over and over again?”

He looks so desolate, so disappointed, and something swells up in Crowley that he wouldn’t be able to name sober, but that nearly approaches his comprehension drunk. He coughs awkwardly, turning away again and collecting himself. There isn’t much he can say to soothe the worries he himself has been wrestling with for millennia, the worries that got him cast out of Heaven in the first place. These are dangerous questions the angel is asking, and a quiet, soft part of Crowley thanks whoever may be listening that it’s all under a haze of intoxication.

Aziraphale, by his side, lets out a long-suffering sigh and looks back out at the Thames. There’s a couple on the eastern bank, cuddled up into each other and staring up at the stars. Aziraphale, apparently now taking his cues from their prone position, flops back onto the grass, staring up at a night sky speckled with stars (for once, it’s not cloudy).

“They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?” he whispers, pointing a shaky, wavering hand at the Milky Way spread above them, Americans quite forgotten. A part of Crowley preens (the stars were always his favorites), and he wobbles over to where Aziraphale is sprawled. “All those stars…sparkling like there’s no tomorrow.” He turns to Crowley abruptly. “What if there _was_ no tomorrow? What if it all ended, right here?”

Crowley shakes his head, as if to dislodge a fly. “What?”

“We know Armageddon is coming. Maybe—maybe not today, but _some_ day. What if it was tomorrow? Where would the stars go then? Who would they shine for?”

The strange feeling wells up in Crowley again, deep and scary, and he pushes it firmly back down. “I don’t know, angel.” Why Aziraphale is concerned about this, of all things, is beyond him, and the knowledge that he can't soothe the angel's worries twinges and pulls at him in ways he doesn't really want to think about.

Aziraphale falls quiet. A cricket chirps in the distance. “Who would they shine for, Crowley?” he whispered, and something inside Crowley snaps, a rubber band that’s been trying to hold together the pieces for far, far longer than it was meant to, and the closet door in a long-forgotten corner of his mind springs right back open.

“I—I have to go,” he says, staggering to his feet and nearly falling over again. Aziraphale sits up, staring.

“Was it something I said?” he slurs, distressed.

Crowley shakes his head frantically, _he’s my best friend_ flashing on a neon sign in the forefront of his brain.

“N—no, not as such,” he stammers, and darts away, weaving only the slightest bit, and leaving Aziraphale behind on the banks of the Thames, leaned back at the stars.  
He makes it to a bench in St. James Park before he collapses, burying his face in his hands and screaming.

Because that’s the thing. _Aziraphale is his best friend._ And in Hell, there’s nothing worse than a best friend—nothing worse than someone you would give up everything for, someone you want to see every day because you enjoy their company. There’s nothing worse than _caring_ for someone, than wanting to make someone’s life _better._

A best friend is the antithesis of everything Hell stands for and everything it was built on, and Crowley having one is far, _far_ worse than his attachments to things like fine wines and wearing sunglasses at night. Hell has a way of taking away the soft things, the rose-tinted, fuzzy-edged things that make life worth living, and Aziraphale? The role he’s unwittingly taken up in Crowley’s life, snuck in and settled down without so much as a by-your-leave? That’s far, far too precious for Hell to leave alone, if they catch wind.

He avoids Aziraphale for a while after that. It’s the height of the French Revolution when he sees him again, trapped in a cell in the Bastille, nearly the victim of the guillotine he’d been so worried about only five years before. Shiny shoes and all that, it’s honestly no wonder he hadn’t made it a day in Paris.

By now, Crowley’s worked out how to deal with this whole _best friend_ thing—at least temporarily. Just tamp it down, and ignore it, and hope to God—Satan—Hell—_something_ that no one finds out. Because there is no way he can lose Aziraphale to Hell, and to cut him out of his life is inconceivable.

So he worries, and he rationalizes, and by the time 1862 rolls around, he’s worried himself right past rationale and all the way into extreme paranoia.

After all, if Hell finds out, and if he has his contingency plan—Hell won’t have any reason to hurt Aziraphale. Will they.

The rejection stings. It pierces deeper than he’d expected. He watches Aziraphale leave, flinging the scrap of paper containing his last ditch attempt at fixing it all into the duck pond, in front of the bench he’d broken down on nearly a century ago, and slowly collapses inwards.

There’s nothing for it. He’s out of ideas, out of _hope_, and the centuries stretch out before him, empty, unfulfilling, and utterly bereft of his angel.

He goes to Mayfair, and he sleeps.

And sleeps.

And sleeps.

\--

He wakes up in 1938, groggy and a little out of it, to the news that he’s missed a whole world war[[7](%E2%80%9C#note7%E2%80%9D)] and that, with the way international tensions are looking, there will be another one, very soon.

Crowley fixes himself[[8](%E2%80%9C#note8%E2%80%9D)] a cup of tea and grudgingly gets to work.

He spends 1939 in the British intelligence, developing a ring of spies and informants around the city. He thinks briefly about going over to Germany, but decides that Hitler is doing well enough on his own over there, and the concentration camps at this point frankly turn his stomach.[[9](%E2%80%9C#note9%E2%80%9D)]

1940 is the peak of his activity in World War II. By now, he has a large network of people answering to him and has amassed quite the reputation. It is in November of 1940 that he hears about a bookseller in Soho who’s gotten taken in by some fool scheme a bunch of Nazis are running out of old churches in London. He dedicates about two days to wondering if it’s Aziraphale (pretending he isn’t wondering, then wondering intensely, then pretending he isn’t wondering at all—it flip-flops in an alarmingly rapid fashion) before finally deciding to ignore the issue altogether. Aziraphale is smart[[10](%E2%80%9C#note10%E2%80%9D)]; if he’s in trouble, he’ll be able to get himself out of it.

He hears about the book deal in March of 1941, and the attached double-crossing spy. It is so blindingly obvious, so fantastically evident that it’s a double-cross, that it frankly embarrasses Crowley to admit that the bookseller involved—a “purveyor of old, almost impossibly rare books”—is most definitely Aziraphale.

_This is your best friend,_ a part of him whispers, in affectionate self-deprecation, before the majority of him immediately dogpiles on the thought, pounding it into oblivion.

Crowley slams his head on the table, startling the man giving the briefing—he hadn’t caught his name, something like Haversham or Haberlam or thereabouts—and groans loudly.

Haversham-or-Haberlam clears his throat. “Did you have something to say, Crowley?”

“Oh, no, not at all, I’ve got an appointment I just remembered, must be off,” Crowley says hastily, sauntering rapidly[[11](%E2%80%9C#note11%E2%80%9D)] out of the meeting.[[12](%E2%80%9C#note12%E2%80%9D)]

If he’s quick, he can nip back to his flat to have a quick screaming fit and then a nap before he heads to the church. And maybe he can grab the shoes with the extra-thick soles.

The church goes about as well as he expects it to, seared feet and all. Consecrated ground is never exactly… _comfortable_, and performing a demonic miracle on top of that really only makes it worse—it’s like combining pure potassium and water, and then standing on top of the reaction. At this point, however, the part of Crowley that matters[[13](%E2%80%9C#note13%E2%80%9D)] has given up pretending that there is anything he wouldn’t give up for Aziraphale’s happiness and well-being, and his feet can just go to Heaven for all he cares.

He feels a twinge of careful satisfaction as he wrenches the bag out of the dead Nazi’s hand, and puts it down to a bad job done well—destroyed a church, after all, _and_ more damned souls for his Lord.

He hands the books to Aziraphale, savoring the nearness as their fingers nearly brush on the handle of the bag, and turns towards where the Bentley is parked, walking as gingerly as he can without hurting his feet. It’s a fine line, but if Aziraphale knew he was actually hurt, there would be _fussing_, and frankly Crowley just can’t handle that right now. The barricaded corner of his mind, the one with the poison-tipped darts and the angry hedgehogs, is putting up more of a fuss than it has in _decades_. He doesn’t think it’s been this bad since the Revolution—the French one, that is—and he’s a little afraid of what will happen when it finally crashes open.

They go back to the bookshop, and they talk and they laugh and drink far too much wine, and Aziraphale dotes over the books like they’re his children—or _someone’s_ children, it probably doesn’t matter all that much to him. Crowley goes back to his flat two days later feeling a little fulfilled, and a lot scared.

It’s two days later that he starts planning the heist. World War II is shoved to the back of his mind—he switches to a couple days in the trenches every now and then, just so that he can say he’s putting in the effort, if anyone asks—and he throws himself into it. The basin of holy water at the church is an ever-present vision in the back of his mind. His feet twinge in pain every time he thinks about (they’ll probably be a little burned for at least the next century—the dangers of consecrated ground), and so, while it’s incredibly tempting to just steal into a church one night and take it while no one’s looking, he begins to craft a team.

It takes him twenty years to find everybody. It’s not that the individual elements of what he needs aren’t out there—they’re literally everywhere, and some of them would probably even beg for the opportunity. It’s that he needs people he can silence, people he can hold something really big against, people who won’t talk even when they inevitably end up in Hell. Or he needs people who _won’t_ end up in Hell.

It’s a tall order. It’s nearly impossible, to be honest. Twenty years is actually less time than he thought it would take, and it’s still more time than he thinks he has.

And then Aziraphale shows up. Twenty years of work, of panic and anger and terror and keeping as mum as he possibly can about the whole affair, and Aziraphale shows up, all fluffy hair and tartan and flustered, quiet, _terrified_ mumbling about how he was in Soho, he _hears_ things, Crowley, and he _can’t have you risking your life, Crowley. Not even for something dangerous._

And Crowley breaks. He stares at the tartan—fucking _tartan_—thermos in his hand like it’s something holy. Which it is.

Like it’s something damned.

Which it is.

He offers Aziraphale a lift, doing his very, very best to conceal the shaking in his voice, the repressed emotions and the fear and the terror and the panic and exhaustion and the nerves and the unlocked corner of the back of his mind, door standing open and a reverberation of _I’m in love with him_ ringing around in the inside of his skull.

_You go too fast for me, Crowley._

And part of him stings, and part of him rejoices, and most of him wants to go and curl up and sleep for a whole century again, because Aziraphale knows. There’s a glint in his eyes, there’s a tremor in his hand, and there’s a lilt to his voice that says he knows.

Aziraphale is his friend, and he’s his best friend, and he’s the love of his life, and he _knows._ The part of Crowley that is stinging and hiding in the corner of his mind is overwhelmed by the part of him that’s still trying to process that unlocked cupboard, which is drowned out by the part of him screaming in pure terror, which is outnumbered by the part of him that can’t stop thinking about the tartan thermos that could save his angel’s life, all of which are absolutely, completely disregarded by the part of him that’s doing its level best to convince the rest of him to just go hide for the rest of eternity.

And all of that, all of that, is thoroughly, wholly drowned out by the _hope._ Because Aziraphale brought him holy water. Because he was afraid when he found out Crowley was doing something dangerous. Because he’s offering a picnic. Dining at the Ritz. Because he’s setting out a road map. A future. _Perhaps someday_ is not a _no, we can’t._ It’s not a _no, I don’t feel that way._ It’s a _maybe._ It’s an _I see a future, just not now._ It’s hope and inspiration and chaos and fear and all-out _possibility_ wrapped up in one tremulous, can’t-meet-your-eyes whisper, and Crowley is clinging onto it with his whole life and soul.

Aziraphale gets out of the car. Crowley drives home on shocked autopilot, and sleeps for the next ten years.

And then, all of a sudden, he’s staring at the Antichrist.

All the hope he’s built up over the last sixty years, all the tentative glimpses towards the future and the quiet relaxation—it’s all dashed in one gleeful, spite-filled sentence out of a Duke of Hell who, apparently, lives to just fuck up his entire existence.

That’s fine. He can bottle it up again. He managed for six thousand years. He can do eleven more.

The Apocalypse itself ends up being kind of a disaster. This is not wholly unexpected for Crowley, who had an inkling something was going to go wrong in Tadfield Manor all those years ago, and just chose to ignore it. Wasn’t his problem.

Expect that it really, really, _really_ was.

_You and your best friend Aziraphale, you’re dead meat!_ Hastur shrieks through the ansaphone, and a bolt of fear slices through Crowley. Obviously, they were going to find out about Aziraphale eventually—he’s not so foolish, so naïve, as to assume _someone,_ either Up There or Down Here, wouldn’t notice—but there’s something about hearing it like that, Hastur wielding the phrase _best friend_ like a weapon, like it’s something _wrong_, something _deadly_, that sends cold icicles of terror up and down his veins.[[14](%E2%80%9C#note14%E2%80%9D)]

He spares a second to laugh at Hastur trapped in the ansaphone because, despite the fact that he is completely and utterly fucked, it’s still pretty funny.

Then he gets the Hell out of there, to find Aziraphale. Except he’s too late. He’s too. Fucking. Late.

The flaming bookshop is, possibly, the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

The Earth isn’t worth it.

It can’t be worth it.

It took Aziraphale from him. Or Hell did. Same fucking difference. There’s no way that isn’t hellfire, and he doesn’t have the strength to search for the remains of a singed tartan bowtie to prove it to himself.

His angel. His Aziraphale. Dead in a fucking _fire._

_They killed my best friend._

So he goes off, and he gets drunk, and he waits for the end to come. Fuck the human race. He’s just lost everything. They can too.

Aziraphale shows up, magically. Celestially? _Miraculously._ He fades away just as quickly as he showed up, but it’s enough to jolt life back into Crowley. Maybe there’s hope after all, and as he leaps into his Bentley and tears off towards Tadfield, there are the beginnings of a smile on his face.

Hastur ruins that pretty quickly, though. Always does. How he escaped the ansaphone, Crowley isn’t sure, but it probably involved someone at the other end of one of those horrifying telemarketing schemes he keeps threatening himself off of. If it did, they deserved it.

There’s one thing Hastur hasn’t quite predicted, though, because Crowley can’t do much. He’s a snake, he’s never been horrendously powerful. The biggest thing he ever did was nudge Eve into an apple she was already most of the way to eating.

Crowley can’t do much, but he sure can fucking discorporate Hastur. It’s something to cling to, an ounce of petty revenge for all the shit Hastur’s put him through over the past six thousand years. And it helps to fuel his run through the M25. His _stupid_ fucking _odegra_, back to haunt him all the way from 1986. Somewhere in the back of his mind, about halfway through the flames, he decides that in the future he’s going to think a little harder about the potential repercussions of his demonic actions.

Never mind that there is almost no possible way he could have predicted that the M25 would turn into a flaming hellfire inferno at the first sign of the Antichrist. Honestly.

Seeing Aziraphale in Tadfield is a relief. Some part of him, sure[[10](%E2%80%9C#note15%E2%80%9D)], had known that it really was Aziraphale in front of him in the bar, but seeing the real, physical form[[16](%E2%80%9C#note16%E2%80%9D)] in front of him—cramped as it is in a body not meant for him—is a different kind of reassuring, and for the first time, the thought that they can maybe make it through this begins to entertain the vaguest notion of potentially crossing Crowley’s mind.

Seeing Death, though—that’s a whole other minefield. The other three Horsemen are alarming in their own ways, but Death is the one Horseman Crowley has never, really, had to _personally_ deal with. Yes, he’s seen it happen to plenty of other people, and sure, everyone is probably going to meet their maker at some point, but angels and demons had always seemed to have somewhat of a get out of jail free card. They died when the universe ended. No sooner, no later, barring any kind of—immolation related incidents.

Like Ligur.

And thinking about Ligur gets him thinking about Hastur, and thinking about Hastur gets him thinking about Aziraphale, who isn’t dead yet but is in constant danger while Hastur has free reign in Hell, and…Crowley can’t go down that path right now. He shakes his head and forces himself back to the moment.

Death, the one thing that outlasts even eternity, gives Crowley the heebie-jeebies in places he didn’t even know he could _get_ heebie-jeebies, right out to his wingtips and right down the scales on the snake curled up on the side of his face. Watching Adam just…tell Death he needs to leave, and watching Death _agree_…is one of the most surreal experiences of Crowley’s life, and given that that’s well over ten thousand years, that’s saying something.[[17](%E2%80%9C#note17%E2%80%9D)]

And then the Horsemen are gone, just like that, and the dust is almost settled when Gabriel and Beelzebub rock on up, decked out in their finest (well, worst, in Beelzebub’s case) and ready to bring Apocalypse right back on schedule.

Fast-talking has always been Crowley’s specialty, and the fact that Aziraphale seems to have picked it up, just in the nick of time, warms a little place in his heart that he’s spent the last sixty years trying to pretend doesn’t exist.

The ineffable plan excuse, of course, is a load of horseshit. _Written bigger, somewhere else, underlined, in bold print_—honestly. Quite frankly, he’s astounded Gabriel and Beelzebub swallowed it. He’s even more surprised that they seem to be planning to leave, which is why it doesn’t surprise him at all when the tattletale _bastards_go and tell Adam’s _father._

What does surprise him, though, is that with Satan literally on the rise, the ground shaking and quaking beneath their feet and terrified humans in all directions, Aziraphale threatens him with, of all things, _never talking to him again._

That one stings.

And also, somehow, impossibly in this battlefield of death and destruction-to-be, it makes him hopeful.

Aziraphale hasn’t forgotten. Aziraphale knows, and Aziraphale hasn’t forgotten, and it seems—to Crowley—like he could finally be saying _yes_. Like he's saying _yes, this means so much to me_, and _yes, I care about you_, and even _yes, if we get out of this, **yes**_.

That gives him the jump start he needed, the jolt of inspiration, of motivation, needed to get the creative juices flowing, and he manages to pull a solution out of thin air.[[18](%E2%80%9C#note18%E2%80%9D)]

Adam is amazing.

They didn’t get a lick of influence in him, good or evil, and he turns out better than they could have ever, ever possibly expected. Human incarnate indeed.

And when it’s all said and done, when they’re sitting on a bench waiting for a bus that will take them back to London for no other reason than Crowley says so, and he’s not in the mood for the universe to disobey him right now—when it’s all over, Crowley will invite Aziraphale to his flat, and Aziraphale will say _yes_, and they’ll defy Heaven and Hell, together.

They’ll get home, after, and Crowley will still be steaming with anger—they didn’t even give him a _trial_, for the love of—_Someone_—and Aziraphale will be giddy with relief, with accomplishment, _I made the archangel Michael miracle me a towel!_, and maybe something will finally come out.

Maybe six thousand years and waiting, and hoping, and silently wishing and wanting and fighting and hating and loving and dreaming, maybe it will all catch up to them and they’ll come crashing into each other, giving in to the inevitability of it all.

The ineffability of it all.

And maybe Crowley will air out that corner of his mind, give it a couple houseplants and a window and a good dusting, and maybe he’ll leave his flat and move in to the cozy flat above Aziraphale’s miraculously restored bookshop (the one Aziraphale forgot he ostensibly has, and maybe hastily has to miracle into being the first time Crowley brings it up).

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But for now, they’re sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus, and the morning is ahead of them, filled with possibility and fear, and the bus is going to take them to Crowley’s flat.

And Aziraphale—Crowley’s best friend, the love of his life—hasn’t forgotten.

_fin._

\--

1Aziraphale heard it first, of course—he coined it, way back in Ancient Greece (and he watched in alarm when it devolved into a pissing match and yet another sport). He reported it as an eventual success and didn’t think much of it. [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]

2 Honestly, he felt like Aziraphale should just know it wasn’t him--didn’t he know that was one of the absolute worst bits of fourteenth century? Why on earth would Crowley do that on purpose?  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return2%E2%80%9D)]

3 You know how it is, the whole air of awkwardness, who’s going to apologize first, that whole deal. It gets a rather exaggerated timescale when the beings involved have literally all of eternity to sort things out. [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return3%E2%80%9D)]

4It was the Arrangement. It’s always the Arrangement  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return4%E2%80%9D)]

5This was a fairly typical end to most of their arguments, which were largely circuitous in nature and also completely meaningless.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return5%E2%80%9D)]

6Both Aziraphale and Crowley claimed the credit for that one, and in a startling turn of events, they’d actually both had something to do with it: Crowley had been fomenting in Pennsylvania at the time (admittedly, resenting it quite a lot—the Americas had never been his idea of a good time), and Aziraphale had done his fair share of nudging over in Britain. It worked out rather nicely for both sides, and after, they’d felt they much deserved a break.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return6%E2%80%9D)]

7 There was a commendation sitting on his table when he stumbled out of the bedroom—apparently, he’d done a cracking job on the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whoever that was. [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return7%E2%80%9D)]

8 Miracles himself. [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return8%E2%80%9D)]

9 He’d gotten another commendation from Hell for those and popped over to check it out, and then he’d had to go out to the nearest pub—that hadn’t been bombed—and get very, very drunk for a day or two. It was like the Spanish Inquisition, but by now he’d built up a little more tolerance.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return9%E2%80%9D)]

10 While assuming that intelligence was equivalent to common sense was not Crowley’s first mistake, it was certainly a significant one.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return10%E2%80%9D)]

11This is impossible. He looked like a drunk duck.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return11%E2%80%9D)]

12 He’d been meant to make a rather important presentation, so the fact that he managed to remain in the employ of British intelligence was nothing short of miraculous.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return12%E2%80%9D)]

13That is, the subconscious bit.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return13%E2%80%9D)]

14 He hasn’t quite got veins, but the feeling is about the same, i.e., it sucks. [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return14%E2%80%9D)]

15The subconscious bit, again. Almost nothing of import goes on in the conscious parts of Crowley’s brain.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return15%E2%80%9D)]

16Eyes and wagon wheels and all. Aziraphale always did get a little celestial when he was stressed.  [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return16%E2%80%9D)

17 What, did you think the Earth was created at the start of it all? Don’t be silly. Angels and demons and Heaven and Hell were around long, long before God had even a single thought in Her mind about humanity, and they’ll be around quite a long time after.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return17%22)]

18Literally, actually. And that little bit of time-stopping miracle is probably the most impressive thing Crowley’s done since the Garden of Eden, and that was mostly an accident.  [[return to text](%E2%80%9C#return18%E2%80%9D)]

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! comments n kudos n stuff are always appreciated, if you've got the time :)
> 
> you can find me (mostly reblogging stuff) @azfool on tumblr if you wanna like. yell at me or something idk. 
> 
> drink some water!! have a nice day!!


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